Over the weekend President Obama spoke, as scheduled, at the University of Notre Dame and, as expected, the protests being led by Alan Keyes and Randall Terry continued.
The protesting has been good for the activist’s profiles, as they have received a lot of media coverage and Keyes was even scheduled to appear on Friday’s episode of “Hannity” but couldn’t make it because he had been arrested and was sitting in jail. As such, Terry took his place and spewed the sort of nonsense everyone expects from the founder of Operation Rescue while Hannity nodded along in agreement.
The interesting thing about Hannity and Terry coming together to decry this sort of apostasy against the “pro-life” movement was that the last time Terry was throwing around these sorts of accusations was back in 2007 when the pro-choice Rudy Giuliani was seeking the Republican presidential nomination and Terry was targeting those who dared to support him:
So-called ‘pro-life Republicans’ that are endorsing Rudy – like TX Governor Rick Perry, or NY Representative Pete Sessions, are typical treacherous politicians. They have betrayed innocent blood to support a child-killer; we can only wonder what ’30 pieces of silver’ they are seeking. Pro-life Republicans are on trial, to see what we value more: life or power; principle or party.”
Eventually, Terry focused his ire on Pat Robertson for endorsing Giuliani and even began protesting outside of the CBN office in Washington DC.
And who immediately came to Robertson’s defense? None other than Sean Hannity, who brought Robertson on the show to explain his endorsement. And the reason he did that is because Hannity was also an early supporter of Giuliani’s presidential campaign:
It’s no secret that Sean Hannity, the conservative Fox News commentator, has helped to raise Rudy Giuliani’s profile – but now he’s helped the former mayor raise money, too.
In a little noticed event this month, Hannity – co-host of Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” and host of a popular WABC radio show – introduced the Republican front-runner at a closed-door, $250-per-head fund-raiser Aug. 9 in Cincinnati, campaign officials acknowledge.
In so doing, some believe that Hannity – while clearly a commentator paid to express his opinions – crossed the line from punditry into financial rainmaking for a presidential candidate whose bottom line is now better for it.
When a group of Religious Right leaders declared that they would sooner leave the GOP than support Giuliani if he got the party’s nomination, Hannity brought James Dobson on the program and practically begged him to reconsider, but Dobson would not budge. Eventually, all of Hannity’s championing of Giuliani started getting under the skin of the Religious Right, with leaders like Tony Perkins calling him out for pushing their concerns aside and trying to sell this pro-choice candidate to the right-wing anti-choice base.
So, just over a year ago, when Hannity was supporting a pro-choice candidate in Rudy Giuliani, he had no use for the hardliners on the Right and their incessant focus on abortion.
But today, when the pro-choice President of the United States delivers a commencement address, Hannity brings those same hardliners onto his program to join him in lamenting Notre Dame’s betrayal of the sacred principles of the anti-abortion movement.
